Executive Career Upgrades

Executive Career Upgrades Executive Career Upgrades is the leader in Career Coaching for Directors, VPs, & Execs.

09/02/2026

Candidates research the company and forget the person.

That is backward, because at the senior level you are signing up to work closely with one specific human being, and your success will depend heavily on how well the two of you click.

Start with their career path.
Where did they come from, how long have they been there, what roles did they hold before?

Someone newly promoted into the role has different pressures than a longtime veteran. Then look at what they share publicly. Their posts, their interviews, the topics they care about. This tells you what they value and how they think.

You are looking for two things. First, common ground, a shared background, a mutual connection, an interest you both hold, that builds rapport naturally. Second, their priorities and pressures, so you can speak to what actually keeps them up at night rather than generic strengths.

People hire people they connect with and trust. You cannot connect with someone you have not bothered to understand.

Spend 30 minutes learning who they are. It changes the entire tone of the meeting.

09/01/2026

Resume advice obsesses over numbers, and that leaves a lot of strong leaders stuck. Some of your most important work, building a culture, steadying a team through a crisis, repairing a key relationship, does not come with a tidy percentage.

Inventing one is dishonest and easy to spot. There is a better way to show impact.

When you do not have a hard metric, show scale, stakes, and before-and-after. Scale tells them the size of what you handled.

Led a function of 40 across three regions. Stakes tell them why it mattered. During a period when the company's largest client was threatening to leave. Before-and-after tells them what changed because of you.

None of those require a number you do not have, yet all of them communicate real impact. The reader understands the magnitude and the difference you made without a fabricated statistic.

The goal was never numbers for their own sake. It was proof that you change outcomes.

Show the change, and the proof is there.

08/31/2026

You know, I just move at their pace..

08/31/2026

99% of hiring managers now report using AI somewhere in their hiring process.

It's the current baseline. Assume that almost every application you submit is read by software before a person ever sees it.

A lot of advice responds to this by telling you to beat the machine. Stuff in keywords, format for the parser, reverse-engineer the algorithm. Some of that helps at the margins, but it misses the deeper point.

You are trying to win a game the company built to filter people out, and the house designed the odds.

The better strategy is to make the machine irrelevant to your candidacy. When a hiring manager already knows you want the role, your application is not being screened to decide if you are worth a look. It is a formality confirming a decision already leaning your way. The AI still runs, but it is no longer the gatekeeper, because a human asked for you by name.

So yes, format your resume so the parser can read it. Do the simple basics. But do not pour your best energy into outsmarting software.

Pour it into becoming the candidate a human is expecting. That is the move the algorithm cannot block.

08/30/2026

An informational interview is one of the strongest tools in a senior search, and easy to ruin. Its power is that you aren’t asking for a job; if it feels like a pitch, trust evaporates.

Do it right. Request a genuine conversation to learn about their company, market, career path, and outlook. Bring thoughtful, homework-driven questions, listen more than you speak, respect their time, and end on schedule.

Don’t ask for a job, referral, or resume feedback either. keep the conversation you promised. When you’re genuinely curious and helpful, people think of you for openings, mention you to colleagues, or make introductions.

The less you ask for, the more you get.

Playing the long game has always led to success.

08/29/2026

The average job search for someone who actively networks runs about 3.2 months. For someone relying mainly on online applications, it is 5.8 months.

That gap is close to a full quarter, measured in lost income, lost momentum, and lost peace of mind.

I bring up the numbers because the emotional pull during a search runs in the wrong direction. When you are anxious, applications feel safe. They are private, controllable, and they do not risk rejection from someone you know. Networking feels exposed by comparison.

The 2.6 month difference is not because networkers are more talented. It is because they reach the decision maker sooner, skip the screening pile, and hear about roles before they are crowded.

If you are months in and stalled, the data is telling you where the bottleneck is. The fastest path out is almost always through people, not portals.

Time is the one resource in a job search you cannot get back. Spend it where it actually moves faster.

08/28/2026

Job seekers lose real sleep over employment gaps, convinced that a stretch of unfilled time on the resume is a disqualifier hiring managers will pounce on. The fear is far larger than the reality.

Two things have changed the landscape. First, gaps are simply common now. After years of mass layoffs across every industry, a period of unemployment is no longer unusual or suspicious. Hiring managers have seen it constantly, many have lived it themselves, and the stigma has faded dramatically.

Second, what employers actually react to is not the gap. It is evasiveness about the gap. A calm, honest explanation closes the topic. A defensive dodge opens it.

The trap is letting the fear distort your behavior. Candidates obsess over disguising a gap, and the energy spent hiding it makes them tense and cagey in exactly the moment they need to be composed. The gap becomes a problem mainly because they are treating it like one.

The better approach is to have a simple, honest, two-sentence explanation ready, deliver it without apology, and move on. A layoff, a deliberate pause, a family situation, all of these are normal and acceptable. Name it plainly and watch how quickly the interviewer moves past it, usually faster than you expected.

The gap on your resume is rarely the obstacle. The fear of the gap is the obstacle. Address it once, calmly, and let it go.

08/28/2026

Yeah this sounds like a solo meeting if you ask me...

08/27/2026

I don’t think “let’s align” has ever resulted in alignment… one of us is wrong and I know it isn’t me.

08/27/2026

Recruiters do not browse LinkedIn looking for impressive careers. They search. They type specific keywords into the platform and contact whoever comes up. If the words they use are not on your profile, you are invisible to them, regardless of how strong your background is. This is mechanical, not personal.

So the work is making sure you surface for the right searches. Start by identifying the exact terms a recruiter would use to find someone for your target role. The actual job titles, the core skills, the industry language. Not the clever internal title your last company invented, the standard term the market uses.

Then place those terms where the search engine weights them most. Your headline, your About section, your job titles, and your skills. If you are a fractional CFO, the phrase fractional CFO needs to appear in your headline, not just be implied by your experience. The algorithm matches text, not potential.

This feels a little crude, and it is, but it is how the system works. You can have the best profile in your field and never get contacted because you described yourself in language no recruiter searches for. The fix costs you nothing but a careful afternoon.

Go look at your profile through a recruiter's search box. If the words they would type are not there, add them.

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